sympathy for her family, even as he remained boxed in by his first obligation, which was to Sage. “What do you want me to do?” he demanded impatiently. It wasn’t like he could control Sage. No one could.
“Cowboy up,” Chance said.
Garrett nodded. “Show some responsibility.”
The intimation that he hadn’t stung.
Nick thought about all the times he’d held Sage while she cried—uncharacteristically—over the silliest things. How he’d taken it in stride when she’d fallen asleep, mid-just-about-anything, and/or asked him not to touch her breasts because her nipples were just too sensitive. Surpassed what he really wanted—like sizzling fajitas or a big juicy rare steak—and instead dined on what she was having, even if it was ginger ale and crackers.
Resentment knotted his gut. “How do you know I haven’t been?”
A skeptical silence fell.
Finally, Garrett said, “Have you asked her to marry you?”
Without warning, the curtain behind them was ripped aside. Sage stormed out, temper flaring.
This, too, was par for the course. Since conceiving, her emotions had frequently skyrocketed out of control.
“Whoa, Nellie!” Hormones raging, she marched toward her brothers, shooing them away with both arms. “You guys need to back the heck off!”
Her brothers remained where they were.
And suddenly, Nick knew what had to be done. Whether Sage liked it or not.
“They’re right.” He pivoted back toward her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “The time for pretending there’s nothing going on with us has passed, darlin’.”
Giving her no chance to protest, he swung back to her three brothers. “Sage is pregnant.” He paused to let the words sink in. Aware in that moment he had never been prouder, or happier. “And the baby is mine.”
* * *
“WELL, THAT WENT BADLY,” Nick admitted, the moment Sage’s brothers had left, more than a little disappointed to find out the two of them had no plans to marry.
“You think?” Sage paced back and forth between the aisles. She’d thought Nick was on her side in this! Fuming, she gave him a sharp look. “Now it’s only a matter of time before they tell Mom I’m pregnant with your child.”
His eyes lit up the way they always did when he knew he’d gotten under her skin. “First of all—” Nick shrugged, as if not sure what the big deal was “—you are pregnant. And your brothers are right—you can’t hide it much longer. So unless you cowgirl up and have that talk with your mother—and soon—they’ll be forced to spill.”
As always, his ultramasculine presence, the sun-warmed leather scent of him, made her feel protected and intensely aware. In an attempt to keep her equilibrium, she kept her distance from him. “That’s not really a comfort to me, Nick.”
He rubbed his hand across his closely shaven jaw, then lazily dropped it again, his eyes never leaving hers. “Hey, I call it like I see it. And for the record, Sage? I’d like to tell my family you’re carrying my baby, too!”
The bell above the door dinged.
Sage moaned, thinking it was probably her brothers, back for Round Two of Convince Sage To Do The Traditional Thing. Instead, the interloper was a gorgeous, elegantly dressed young woman Sage had never seen before.
Nick looked surprised but pleased as he moved to shake the lady’s hand. “MR! What are you doing here? I thought our meeting wasn’t until tomorrow.”
This was the lauded MR? Sage thought in shock. From the way Nick had talked about the venture capital executive, she had imagined someone older and stodgier. Not some auburn-haired beauty sporting stylish black eyeglasses who could double as a Hollywood starlet.
Not that Nick had indicated he had noticed MR’s stunning good looks.
He turned back to Sage, backtracking long enough to make introductions. “Sage, this is MR Rhodes, from Metro Equity Partners. She’s the venture capital exec I’ve been working with. MR, this is—”
“Your fiancée?” the exec guessed tartly.
So she was stodgy after all, considering her disapproving tone as her gaze moved knowingly to Sage’s tummy.
“Ah—” For the first time since the other woman had entered the store, Nick looked flummoxed.
“Baby mama?” MR guessed again, with a candid smile that did not reach her eyes.
The set of Nick’s mouth was suddenly as tense as his shoulders. “Did you want to talk business this evening?” he asked brusquely.
MR got the hint. “Briefly, I do. We’re very close to getting approval from the other partners for the deal you and I have been negotiating.”
A long, slow back and forth of ideas that had been going on as long as Sage had known Nick. “That’s great news!” he said.
MR scowled, suddenly seeming as reluctant and unhappy as Nick had a second ago. “It would be, if you weren’t in the midst of a situation.”
Oh, dear. “Maybe I should leave,” Sage said.
“No.” Nick clapped a possessive hand on her shoulder. He gave her a look that said they had nothing to hide. “You stay.”
Okay, then.
He turned back to MR. “What do you mean by situation?”
MR huffed and looked at Sage as if she were a spoiler. “The plan is to make Nick the public face of the new Western-wear stores. Have him featured prominently in every ad, with personal appearances at every location. But we can’t do that if he’s a deadbeat dad.”
Deadbeat dad? “Nick is not shirking his responsibility,” Sage said hotly.
“I know my partners. They are old-school, family men. There is no way they’re going to go for the new company spokesperson—the brand representative, if you will—having a kid out of wedlock. It’s just not going to happen.” MR looked Nick in the eye. “So unless you want to be trapped here in this one-horse town, in this one-horse store, in perpetuity, the two of you need to get hitched. Pronto.”
Sage turned to Nick in a panic. She didn’t want him to lose everything he had been working so hard to achieve, any more than she wanted to be backed into a corner herself. To her relief, he reached over and gave her hand an understanding squeeze.
“What if we had the rest of my family—my three sisters and brother, and all my nephews and nieces—in the ads?” Nick proposed. “Maybe even use photos of the rest of the Monroe clan. We could go back as far as the store’s beginnings, which is four generations.”
“No. You are the one they want to see in all the ads. And you can see why, right?” MR turned to Sage in full business mode. “He’s like a younger, hotter, tall-dark-and-handsome Ralph Lauren. Our vision
